Station Crew Works Medical Checks as Robonaut Gets Upgrades

Commander Steve Swanson continues getting Robonaut 2 ready for its first steps as an assistant crew member both inside and outside the International Space Station. He attached the humanoid robot to its new legs Thursday and outfitted it with new internal and external gear and cables.

Robonaut 2 is scheduled for more upgrades this fall before it begins to move on its own. Robonaut was designed to enhance crew productivity and safety while also aiding people on Earth with physical disabilities.

In between the Robonaut upgrade work, Swanson worked with the Advanced Colloids Experiment (ACE) hardware preparing for another run of the fluids physics study. The commander opened the Fluids Integrated Rack to get the Light Microscopy Module ready for ACE sample photography work. He then mixed a colloid sample (microscopic solids suspended in a liquid) using a magnet for this version of ACE which looks at the behavior of liquids and gases separating from each other.

Astronauts Reid Wiseman and Alexander Gerst partnered up Thursday morning for eye exams. The duo used optical coherence tomography hardware to capture detailed images of their eyes and retinas. At the end of the day, they got back together for another eye exam using a Fundoscope with guidance from ground support. Wiseman took on the Crew Medical Officer role and examined Gerst’s fundus, the interior surface of his eye opposite the lens, which includes the retina.

During the day, Wiseman conducted some spacewalk hardware stowage work in preparation for upcoming installation duties. He also spent a few minutes inside the cupola to capture imagery of snare cables on the Canadarm2’s Latching End Effector (LEE). The LEE is the tip of the giant robotic arm that captures spacecraft and latches on to points on the space station known as portable data grapple fixtures.

Gerst was inside the Columbus lab module during the afternoon working on the Biolab, a facility for studying the effects of microgravity and radiation on microorganisms, cells, tissue cultures, small plants, and small invertebrates. The German astronaut from the European Space Agency exchanged filters and a cold sponge inside the research rack.

Flight Engineer Alexander Skvortsov drew his blood and saliva samples at the beginning and end of Thursday and processed them before stowing them in a science freezer. The Immuno study examines saliva, blood and urine samples to observe changes in a crew member’s stress and immune responses while living in space.

The veteran cosmonaut then moved on to the Russian crew mobility experiment Motocard for the rest of the morning. Fellow cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev assisted Skvortsov before he spent a couple of hours on the study to help current and future crew members adapt to motion in microgravity. The duo got back together mid-afternoon for another experiment that explores the durability of Russian segment materials exposed to the dynamic loads of orbital activities.

Upcoming Expedition 41 Commander Max Suraev was joined by Artemyev in the Zarya cargo module installing overlay sheets on interior panels. Suraev then checked air flow sensors before moving on to inventory checks and Russian segment maintenance work.